FO4: Journals From The Outpost: Angry Red & The Dead Boy
by Sir Rawk
Summary: Eddie Munday joined the Minutemen a few months ago, but he is no longer the new guy - and that's a big relief. When Luke 'The Boy' Granville - the newest recruit - cops more than his fair share of the flack, Munday and the moody, dangerous Corporal Red Langdon must fight their way behind enemy lines to save the kid and their entire squad from a ruthless band of gunners.
1. Chapter 1

**A NEW FALLOUT 4 STORY**

 **Journals From The Outpost:**

 _ **Angry Red & The Dead Boy**_

 **~ 1 ~**

* * *

THE SKY SHONE BRIGHT like a polished tungsten heatshield. To the north the telltale lemon-lime stain of a passing rad-storm was pushed along by a rancid but merciful southerly. On days like this you could almost wish for such a storm to turn back round and shower it's cool, rad-packed droplets all over you - and just hope someone back in the O.Z. might have a spare Radaway on offer. It was mid-July and another screaming hot day in the Commonwealth.

Red was teaching The Boy to shoot mole rats in the culvert. LT Mac was scanning the hills with the monocular thingy he had salvaged from the old Valley Hospital a few days ago. He was searching for anything we might have missed during our last sweep. The rest of us were sprawled out in the shade atop a rocky outcrop, which gave out onto a spectacular view of the Wild Dog Plains. Long, rolling pastures of undulating bullgrass raked up against sudden projections of black granite. The plains were pitted with swamp ponds and the telltale yellow barrels of nuclear waste, and were cut through by the long and shattered spine of a pre-war superhighway. Sergeant Rawler, Trejo, Boomer, Chopshop, Zaff and me. Six full-grown men confined to the modest circle of shade one lonely bramble-willow could offer, waiting for the midday sun to burn its way out behind the jagged ranges in the west.

LT Mac stalked back under the thorny fronds and sank to his knees, pulling out his canteen and drinking from it the way a Brahmin calf might suckle the last of its mother's milk - both heads included. If I had not finished my own water an hour ago I would have joined him. Out here you could drink a full canteen of water for every hour of the long, hot day and still not quench your thirst.

Red was leaning over The Boy, intimately tutoring him on the finer points of sniping. Even with the Sting-wing scars running down one side of her face she was a good looking woman. Any sort of attention from a woman would have been a thrill for the sixteen year old trooper no matter what the circumstances. But from a woman like Red it was almost too much. At first you might think the redheaded Corporal was doing it for her own selfish gratification. Maybe to pass the time, maybe to make herself feel good, to see those doting eyes look up into hers like a love-sick puppy. In reality it was even worse. Each and every reassuring compliment she gave, each tender and considered touch she applied to the young trooper's posture as he handled her hunting rifle, she did at the expense of Sergeant Wes Rawler, her ex, sitting nearby.

'Always on the out-breath,' Red crooned into The Boy's ear. 'Blow long and slow like this, _fshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh_. Like an old kickball after you've poked your switchblade in it. And once you've got that ugly momma in your sights take your shot.'

The hunting rifle kicked. The bell silencer at the end of the barrel spat like a viper. The Boy swiped the sweat from his eyes and stood up to get a better look at what he'd done. Red sat next to him grinning.

'Not too bad, Boy!' she praised him. 'You winged her. It's kinda hard to tell, cause mole rats don't feel much. But I reckon she'll have trouble chomping on the legs of any Pack Brahmin for a while to come.'

The Boy shook his head and handed the silenced hunting rifle with its makeshift wireframe stock back to its owner. His face was beaming, his cheeks almost as red as the Corporal's hair. 'How do you do it from that distance, Corp? I can clip one after missing three in a row but you always get the shot. Clean kill, first time, every time. How?'

Corporal Abigail 'Red' Lanyon grinned and put the rifle stock up to her chin. She took aim crouched as she was, bracing her lead elbow on her knee. She exhaled loudly to remind The Boy of her instructions and pulled the trigger. The rifle sneezed. The Boy let out a loud whoop, jumped up, spun about and threw his hat down at his feet before sitting back down again.

'Every goddam time!' he cried in awe.

Red just grinned. 'I thought I'd put her out of her misery for you.'

LT Mac picked at something in his ear. 'Red? Now that all those mole rats down there have gone scat, could you maybe save some of that ammunition for the men we're hunting?'

'Yeah, Red. Best not teach The Boy bad habits.' Sergeant Rawler glared at them from the other side of the bramble-willow. He was cleaning the dust from his combat rifle. His cool, grey eyes went from appraising his rifle one moment to staring exit-wounds through the back of The Boy's head the next. 'Won't be so sharp when they're shooting back at us and you got no rounds left in your clip.'

Red stared at Rawler for a long time. Her grin never once wavered. Whatever he'd done to piss her off he was going to pay for it for a long while yet. 'How many in their gang did you say, LT?'

The Lieutenant sighed. He knew all too well where this was heading. 'Nine, maybe ten, Red.' He crawled back out into the hammering sunlight to scan the dusty hills again.

Red nodded at that, her green eyes locked on Rawler. She touched the scar down the right side of her face. 'I got twenty-five left in the can, six in the rifle. I estimate two shots per bad guy on a bad day. That gives me six or seven to play with and four extra for whatever the hell else we blunder into while we're out here. If you lot can't handle the rest then we're all done for anyways.'

LT shook his head. 'I know we're lucky to have you, Red. You leavin' that gunner crew and all and bestowing us with your award-winning marksmanship. The Minute Men could not ask for a better shooter. But could you maybe find it in your cold markswoman's heart to save a little of that ammunition for me, Corporal? Please? At least to show The Boy a little common sense.'

'Of course, LT!'

'Good girl. Now who's turn is it to get the water?'

The squad looked to me then. I couldn't argue with it. Since Luke 'The Boy' Granville joined us three months ago - after poor Voss took one in the neck - I'd been sailing fair weather outside their endless flack and pestering administration of meaningless duties. It was nice to not be the new recruit for once. I guess the shit-kicking had to swing back round at some point.

'I can see you've chosen the worst possible time for me to fill up the canteens,' I admonished them all. 'You could have asked me back at the creek, or even near the old relay station. But no, you ask me now. Out here. In Mole Rat city.'

'Quit your whinging, Munday!' The Boy piped up in a particularly deprecating voice. 'The mole rats have all been scared off by Corporal Red's and my very fine shooting. At least for a minute or two. That's plenty time for you to traipse down there and - _GO GET OUR WATER!_ '

He must have expected an enthusiastic reaction from the rest of the squad because he sat there howling with laughter for a long time, slapping his leg and having a good ol' time of it. When it finally sank in no one was laughing with him, but instead were giving him silent looks of disapproval, he got spooked.

'What?' he squeaked. His station had just dropped out beneath him like the boots of a hanged man.

'Is that how you speak to your betters?' I asked with a melodramatic air. I even _tsk-tsked_ to belabour the point. 'Kids these days? You can't take 'em anywhere.' I said this even though Granville was only three years my junior.

'What!' The Boy shrieked again.

'Double watch for you tonight,' Red muttered, still with that grin on her cheeks.

The Boy shot her a hurt look. 'No way! Why?'

'You heard the corporal, Boy.' It was the first time Rawler had agreed with something Red had said since their unspoken breakup a week ago. He even got a smile and wink for it. 'Double watch for mouthing off to your superior.'

I grinned. It was nice to know the gang were there for me - even though this sort of hazing was customary.

'But he's a trooper,' The Boy cried in outrage. 'I'm a trooper. He's no higher up than me - or Boomer, or Zaff, or Trejo, or even Chopshop!'

'You're nothing unless we say you are, Granville.' LT Mac grunted over his shoulder, using The Boy's name probably for the first time since he'd marched with us. 'One of these unlucky lads is gonna make Corporal in a week or so, so mind your manners.'

Luke 'The Boy' Granville gaped at the Lieutenant in shock. 'Well if I'd known _that_ …'

'You could make it up to me?' I confided in him, as if to give him a smattering of leeway. 'Trooper Granville.'

'How?'

The others were laughing already as I put my canteen into his hands. 'Go get our water.'

A near murderous gleam passed across Granville's eyes. He shook his head and stared at the ground and muttered bitterly to himself. He stomped around the group snatching up everyone's canteen until the collection was hanging off him like he was some walking Christmas Tree from an Old World poster.

'Get me some of that nice cool water out of the sun, will ya?' Boomer asked in a playful tone.

'Oh yeah me too,' Red chirped in. 'Some nice icy shady water!'

'Better keep that Old Timer double-barrelled shotgun we gave you handy in case those moley rats come back,' Chop Shop rasped in amusement. 'I don't wanna have to go and stitch your arms and legs back on. It's too hot for an old man like me to deal with polytrauma. Not today.'

'Oh man!' Granville groaned and turned his back on us. Around him the slipshod tutu of canteens bounced and _clonked_ and _clunked_ as he stomped down the hill, kicking at stones as he went.

Everybody was still laughing when LT Mac suddenly hissed and stuck a fist in the air. Something was up.

That clear-cut singular action soured the mood in a nanosecond. There was no need to tell any of us to shut up. He dropped to his belly, combat rifle up. Eyes bright with fear.

Death was out there somewhere and LT Mac was the only one who had seen it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Journals From The Outpost:**

 _ **Angry Red & The Dead Boy**_

 **~ 2 ~**

* * *

EVERYONE HAD HEARD IT BUT THE BOY. He was still _clonking_ and _clunking_ down to the culvert moaning to himself about the lack of brotherliness amongst Minutemen and how he wished he'd taken up that caravan guard job he'd been offered in Diamond City.

'What'd you see LT?' Benny Trejo whispered, trying to ascertain wether to draw out his hefty sidearm or a forearm sized warhead.

Trejo was the squad's missile man. On his back was the monstrous pipe-launcher that would fire one of six missiles tucked into the bandolier across his chest. It was said he had made short work of super-mutants with that launcher on more than one occasion. His bull-barrelled .44, however, won the competition. He looked at LT Mac expectantly, his thick, walrus moustache twitching beneath his dark eyes.

The rest of us hunkered low on our bellies, weapons in hand. Only LT knew where the bad guys were, so we just did what he did. And as he was hunkered down as low as he could go, so were we.

The late Corporal Voss's old .45 combat rifle was up and ready in my hands. The hefty weapon made me feel a lot more confident than the ancient double-barrelled shotgun assigned to me before he was KIA. The shotgun everyone in the squad nicknamed 'Old Timer' was now assigned to Granville. I glanced back down the hillside and could still hear The Boy _clonking_ and _clunking_ and muttering obscenities about his lot in life and how cruel the world was.

'Granville!' Red hissed after him. LT raised his hand to silence her, but she ignored him.

'Boy!' she hissed again. But The Boy did not hear her. 'Goddamit! If he doesn't get killed by those damned mole rats down there someone's gonna start using him for target practice. Where are they LT?'

LT Mac just glared at her.

Then we heard them.

Laughter. Cruel and low. Followed quickly by the dry rattle of voices long used to sleeping and marching in the dust of the wasteland. The laughter stopped almost as soon as it started, and then the voices dropped to excited whispers.

'Shit,' LT muttered under his breath.

We all flinched as the first shot rang out.

The report was like a crack of thunder. It bellowed, barely twenty yards away, and rolled in lazy echoes across the hills.

The Boy let out a yelp. We could hear the canteens _clonk-clunking_ in a mad drumline as he tumbled bodily down the hill.

'Bingo!' a man shouted. His friends laughed with him.

LT motioned with his hand. Four fingers up followed by a sharp point to our 8 o'clock. It was the opposite direction from where Granville had gone and a little further up the hill.

Red was the first up. Then Sergeant Rawler. I came up with LT and the rest of the squad.

Red's silenced hunting rifle sneezed. The .308 round went through the neck of one gunner, as clean a shot as she had taken out on the mole rat down in the culvert. A pink mist flowered into the air. The gunner collapsed dead in the dust.

Rawler hit the second guy with a three round burst from his combat rifle. The .45 rounds stitched the guy's belly below his chest plate and sent him tumbling down the hillside.

The last two gunners were standing in confounding close proximity. How they had not heard us or we had not heard them was a mystery. The pair lifted their assault rifles to their shoulders and returned fire.

A hail of 5.56mm raked the bramble-willow patch above us. The bullets buzzed over my head like angry bloatflies. The reports rattled the sky and resounded off the hillsides. But for some reason they missed us entirely.

We all opened up then. It was a miniature hellstorm and the last two gunners jiggled the leadbelly dance of death before dropping atop the bodies of their comrades. Then we heard the shouts of more gunners nearby. They were urging one another into position. Damned if we hadn't just stirred them all up like a nest of angry ants.

Red was up and running before LT could stop her.

'Watch her back, Munday!' he screeched at me. 'Get her back up here!'

I nodded and took off into the burning sunlight.


	3. Chapter 3

**Journals From The Outpost:**

 _ **Angry Red & The Dead Boy**_

 **~ 3 ~**

* * *

IN A FIREFIGHT EVERYTHING DILATES wide open. The doorway to the senses is brazenly flung open. Because fear has arrived. In through the front gate and straight up in your face. Fear has shown you its hand. No longer looming in some uncertain future. In that moment you become nothing more than an industrious chem-factory of adrenalin and raw, physiological power. Moving, doing and being like you've never moved, or done, or been before.

I could see The Boy's legs thrust out from the bullgrass across the sun-baked concrete of the culvert at the bottom of the hill. Red was tearing headlong down the hillside after him with a homicidal urgency. I could hear her swearing with each and every step. I did my best to keep pace with her, bounding downward, leaping over boulders and shrubs. She was sobbing and swearing at the same time. Like an hysterical mother racing after a wayward son who had come to harm when her back was turned.

Then I saw the ground crimp up and buckle inward. We were not alone. We had company. It was not just the gunners we were going to have to worry about.

The first mole rat split the ground open in front of me. A feral face, with rabid yellow eyes, shrouded in dark bristles. Huge, industrial-sized claws scraped open the earth.

The creature lunged after the sprinting Corporal.

'Red!' I screamed.

There was nothing she could do. I fired two shots in a desperate attempt to hit the thing, but they went wide, cracking into the earth either side of the monstrous vermin.

Red did not hear the warning. She fired at something else on the other side of the culvert. Her aim, as always, was true. Something squealed in agony. Then the mole rat struck her from behind and Red went tumbling to the ground in a snarling heap.

Dust plumed into the air along with boots, a hunting rifle, red hair, and long, scrabbling claws. The two of them rolled and tumbled in a savage clinch all the way down the hill.

Red barely got her arm up in time to protect her face. The metal forearm greave she was wearing buckled under the tremendous pressure of the creature's slavering jaws. Its long claws scraped feverishly against her leather cuirass. She would have been gutted wide open if she had not been wearing it. One of the mole rat's claws snapped a bandolier in two and sent baseball grenades tumbling like giant radchicken eggs through the bullgrass.

There was no time to fire again. I kicked out as I ran, swinging my boot for all it was worth.

My boot struck the mole rat square in the side of the head. It felt like kicking a two-hundred pound lead weight. If I had not been wearing steel capped boots my toes would have snapped. As it was my ankle twisted and I tumbled over them, screaming out Red's name again.

The corporal's hunting knife flashed in the sunlight. The mole rat squealed and a hot spray of blood soaked across my trousers. Red made a sound like a dog savaging its prey. Her blade drove in and out of the creature in a frantic blur as the mole rat fought just as fiercely to tear out her throat.

I took aim again but the struggling pair made it impossible to get a clear shot.

'Keep still!' I roared.

I was answered with a pair of guttural inhuman snarls.

Three more mole rats tore up out of the earth and bounded towards us. Smallarms fire erupted at the top of the hill. Our squad was too busy being entertained by the gunners to come join in on the fun we were having with the local Commonwealth fauna.

One mole rat dove underground. It slipped beneath the earth as though the baked soil and bullgrass were nothing more to it than mud and butter. The other two charged headlong at us.

If I ended up in the same position as Red, with a mole rat on top of me, we were dead.

I fired a steady five round burst. The first mole rat's skull blew apart in bloody shards. Three more rounds knocked the other mole rat back down the hill, giving me enough time to turn back toward Red.

I took aim and fired once more. The .45 calibre rounds tore through the mole rat's shoulder and spine. It convulsed atop Red and vomited blood over her.

The sound of sharp panting grew dangerously close. I spun back to finish the mole rat I had crippled but its stumpy tail was already wiggling down into the earth and was gone.

'Are you okay?' I asked. My eyes frantically scanned the dusty hillside.

'Better than he is,' Red replied.

She extricated her arm from between the dead mole rat's teeth. She kicked the creature's body off hers and crawled to her feet, gasping in the hot, dry air. Her hunting knife and arm were slathered in blood all the way up past her elbow. She sheathed the knife and picked up her rifle.

'I almost had her,' Red said to me. 'If you hadn't interrupted.'

'Anytime,' I acknowledged her ambiguous response.

Down in the culvert, not twenty feet away, we could hear The Boy wailing in agony.

'Granville!' I shouted. 'Shut up!'

I knew the sound of our voices was going to draw the mole rats to us. I fought a savage urge to grab Red right then and drag her back up to the safety of the rocky outcrop, and back to the squad, even if they _were_ in the middle of a fire fight. The Boy could stay down here and fend for himself. A small part of me was pleased I didn't.

'Help me!' Granville howled. 'Those bastard's shot me in the back - the cowards! Help me, I'm bleeding!'

'Everybody's bleeding!' Red shouted back. She had her hunting rifle up against her shoulder. 'Keep your mouth shut, Boy! Or the mole rats will rip you to pieces!'

I could feel them beneath my boots. Tearing through the ground. Small tremors in the earth as it was scratched and chewed away at impossible speeds. It gave the impression the monstrous vermin were everywhere at once.

'Watch my six!' Red ordered.

We staggered down to where Granville lay in the concrete culvert. The Boy lay face down in a pool of blood, canteens all around him. The shotgun Old Timer was nowhere in sight. He was trying to plug a hole in the lower half of his back with trembling fingers.

Up on the hill the firefight had diminished. Now it was the sporadic pot shots of men springing out from cover to fire at the enemy before ducking back again. They would be trading shots like that until enough of one side was dead or injured or had run away - or they ran out of ammunition.

'He needs a stimpack bad,' I said, trying to ascertain truly how bad The Boy's condition was.

Red spun towards me. Her hunting rifle was up under her chin. The silencer bell at the end of the barrel loomed in front of my face like a big black moon. She pulled the trigger.

The shockwave of each shot rattled my jawbone, ripping through the air past my cheek. I would have been deafened for life if not for the silencer. As it was I was left stunned like a brained fish.

My reactions were sluggish, as was to be expected of a man who had just been shot at - or at least shot _close_ to. But the enemy was behind me. I spun in a tight circle, atop the heel of my boot, and brought my combat rifle up to bear.


	4. Chapter 4

**Journals From The Outpost:**

 _ **Angry Red & The Dead Boy**_

 **~ 4 ~**

* * *

RED WAS SO FAST I was left dumbfounded. Just as The Boy had been blown away by her marksmanship from atop the hill. And I was already accustomed to how good a shot she was.

Her target already lay on his back, convulsing. A single gunner who had blundered out into the sunlight to either escape the gunfight above or to try to flank our squad. Whichever decision he had made in the end his fate was sealed. He was now catching some rays on his back on the dusty concrete, coughing up fragments of his larynx. He clutched desperately at the jagged mess of his throat. His assault rifle lay next to his elbow but there was not enough life in him to grab for it. By the time Red stood over him he had stopped moving. His lifeless pale eyes cooked under the searing sun.

'There's a tunnel back here,' Red said. 'If they've got our boys pinned down up top we can flank 'em from down here.'

I looked at her in horror, then down at Granville. 'LT told me to bring you back. And we need to get this kid up to Chopshop asap. He needs a bloodpack desperately, not to mention a stimpack or two.'

Red frowned for a second at my words. It appeared her logic and mine had vastly differing conclusions. I swallowed hard, remembering Corporal Abigail Langdon outranked me in situations like this. She never took advice or an order from anyone she didn't want to, not even the LT, unless they were thinking along the same lines.

'We'll take him into the tunnel with us.' She said.

She slung her rifle then leaned down and grabbed Granville under one shoulder. I scooted over and took Granville's weight from the other side.

'What if there are more than we can handle?' I asked. 'LT said maybe nine or ten. But it sounds like there's a hell of a lot more than that. And _this_ guy you just took out...'

My question was left unanswered as the ground buckled violently beneath our feet. We lifted Granville and rushed him sobbing and groaning across the culvert between us, and ducked inside the ancient drain pipe.

The atmosphere in here was icy and damp in contrast to the blistering dry heat outside. As fast as I could I slammed the large metal grate closed behind us, leaning all my weight into it. It was just in time too.

As it shut a huge molerat, displaying impossible levels of irradiated physiology, bright green and emanating an unnatural heat of its own, smashed up against the grill. The force of it's skull colliding with the steel bars sent me sprawling backwards. Red had to hold both Granville and I from toppling to the floor. The creature roared at us from the other side in feral indignation. If it had the aptitude to open doors and latches with its monstrous claws it would have plunged into the tunnel to devour us where we stood.

The irradiated molerat screamed in frustration and then bounded away. We watched as it dug back into the earth on the other side of the culvert and was gone.

'Out of the frying pan and into the fire,' Red said with a grin.

I didn't question how she managed to be amused by any of this. All of us were lucky to have got here with our lives and limbs attached. Red was just cut from a different cloth. Once I had found my footing again I glanced around our new location.

The ancient drainpipe led off into the darkness. There were signs of tenancy here already. An old wooden chair stood alongside a small sqaure table. There was a jet inhaler and a half finished bottle of Gwinnet Pilsner atop the table. In the distance we could hear the snappy, easy-listening tune of _Atom Bomb Baby_ by the Fivestars - one of a plethora of mind-lullling songs circulating on Diamond City Radio.

A chem-cooler sat under the table and Red leaned Granville on me to check it out. She crouched low with a bobbypin and nail file in hand and began to tweak the lock. I had seen her do it a number of times before. It was just another of the corporal's many surprising talents.

'There might be something in here we could use,' she murmured with a spare bobbypin between her lips. There was a defining _click_ and the lid popped open. But Red let out a resigned sigh. 'Damned junkie gunners. Psycho and jet. Who needs anything else?'

'The jet'll make you jittery,' I intoned the old saying, hoping to make light of the situation. I could have punched myself, however, as I noticed Red stare at those injectors and inhalers with eyes as wide and luminous as a kid in a candy stall. The corporal had been both a raider and a gunner in previous incarnations of her one hard-lived life. I knew it was no simple thing for her to fight the old habits locked away inside her body.

The corporal ignored me all the same and stuffed the chems into Granville's pockets. 'He'll need this shit more than we will.'

'Jet and psycho?' I asked.

Red nodded. 'In a pinch the jet will make things a lot easier for him, and the psycho is a last resort if he's about to slip away on us. Its no stimpack but it's better than him dying on us straight away. It might give us a few more minutes to get him up to chopshop. We can pump him full of addictol when we get back to the outpost.'

She stood up then, turned and rushed back to the closed grate at the tunnel entrance. Before I could admonish her for her profound stupidity she flung the metal grill open and ducked back out into the sunlight.

'What are you doing?' I cried. Granville moaned in my arms.

Red ignored me. She took a quick glance up and down the culvert then raced over to the dead gunner. She plucked up his assault rifle, some spare clips, grabbed a bandolier of frag grenades along with a small satchel. She unbuckled the blood soaked chest plate and hurried back into the drainpipe slamming the metal grill behind her.

The smile on her face was unforgettable. Abigail Langdon might not be pumping her veins full of jet and psycho anymore but she sure was doing a good job of filling up her vascular system with enough adrenalin to fuel a platoon of soldiers going into battle.

A pair of molerats skittered by. They sniffed the tunnel entrance but ran off again once they realised their prey was safely ensconced behind the grill.

Red offered me the chest plate as she caught her breath. 'Put this on. It's gonna come in handy. This stuff costs more caps, Munday, than you've seen in all your eighteen years.'

'Nineteen,' I corrected her. 'Why don't _you_ put this on?'

The corporal's look was answer enough. I sat Granville down in the wooden chair and grabbed the chest plate. It was incredibly light. Built of moulded ballistic polymer from before the Great War. Nothing like the metal cuirasses our squad were wearing up top or the heavy leather jerkin Red owned. I wondered how we had managed to kill any of the gunners in the first place if they were all wearing this high level kit. Then I remembered how accurate Red was with her rifle. A ballistically near-invulnerable chest plate was no match for a .308 round through the neck.

I pulled the chest plate on and buckled it over my shoulders and around my waist. The dead gunner's blood was sticky on my fingers. I had to admit, however, the armour lent me a small world of comfort for what we were about to go and do.

I lifted Granville up again and dragged him along as Red lead us deeper into the underground hideout. The tunnel split into a Y junction. One branch had collapsed entirely. Strips of sunlight filtered down upon the pile of shattered concrete and ragged earth. The other branch disappeared into pitch darkness. Red pulled out a small flashlight and shone it down the tunnel.

The din of the firefight coming from above echoed faintly over the music of Diamond City Radio. When Granville moaned aloud between us Red clapped a hand over his mouth, hard enough to cut off his breathing.

'Keep your complaints to yourself,' she hissed in his ear. 'Cause if you don't I'm gonna ask Munday to drag you all the way back out to that culvert again and feed you to the mole rats, understand?'

The Boy nodded, gritting his teeth against the pain. She released her grip on him and he gasped in long and haggard breaths.

Red led us deeper into the gunner's lair. Although her hunting rifle was slung over one shoulder, she held the dead gunner's assault rifle up and ready like a professional, with the flashlight lighting the way, ready to blast anything coming towards us. I followed as quickly as I could with Granville's weight staggering alongisde me.

I could have sworn Red was moving in time with the spritely, crooning echoes of the Five Stars. Like she was at some Diamond City folk dance - where the men let a single female take the lead and followed her into the mouth of darkness.

 _Atom Bomb Baby, Little Atom Bomb_

 _I want her in my wigwam._

 _She's just the way I want her to be,_

 _A million times hotter than TNT._


End file.
